Description:
Secret Ingredients of Life: A Memoir of Identity, Appetite, and the Hunger for Home is the story of a woman who learns that belonging is built, one choice at a time. Adopted at three days old, Susanne Dillingham grows up loved yet searching, carrying an ache she can't quite name. Years later, she experiences adoption from the other side as a birth mother, making a decision that will reshape how she understands family, love, and selfhood.
Threaded through the heat of kitchens and the freedom of Italy, Susanne discovers that food is identity, memory, and the language of care when words fail. She transforms that insight into a life of hospitality, building The Tiny Chef from the ground up into a sought-after brand defined by seasonal cooking, wine pairing, and white-glove trust, the invisible structure that lets clients relax and feel held. As her reputation grows, so does the pressure of running a business without losing the soul that made it special.
When a long-awaited search leads to a photo that feels like a mirror and a reunion that changes everything, Susanne must navigate the beautiful, complicated truth that family can be real in more than one direction and that success doesn't cure hunger; it simply gives you new ways to name it.
Warm, honest, and richly sensory, Secret Ingredients of Life is a memoir about the sweetness and salt of survival, the heat that refines us, and the bravery to become your own home.
Brief description: Susanne Dillingham is a chef, sommelier, author, and founder of The Tiny Chef. She trained at Apicius International School of Hospitality in Florence, Italy, and holds the WSET Advanced qualification and a Sommelier Diploma from the International Sommelier Guild. Her culinary education has extended far beyond the classroom, through vineyards, kitchens, and family farms across Europe.For nearly a decade, Susanne worked as a private chef for Jeff Gordon and Ingrid Vandebosch while building The Tiny Chef, her North Carolina-based culinary business specializing in private dinners, destination experiences, corporate events, and hands-on cooking classes. Her work has been featured in regional and national media, and she competed on Food Network's "Extreme Chef".Susanne lives with her daughter in historic Gold Hill, North Carolina, where she grows herbs, vegetables, fruit, and edible flowers and keeps honeybees. SECRET INGREDIENTS OF LIFE is her first book.
Review Quotes:
"What I loved about Secret Ingredients of Life is Susanne's willingness to keep discovering who she is. Her life takes turns she could never have anticipated, from searching for her beginnings to finding her way to Italy and ultimately building a career around food. Through it all, she develops her own sense of taste, purpose, and home. It is warm, funny, sophisticated, and wonderfully alive."
- Maureen Lippe, former Vogue and Harper's Bazaar editor, and author of Radical Reinvention
"We spend much of our lives trying to understand what we are truly hungry for. Susanne Dillingham's beautiful story reminds us that nourishment comes in many forms."
- Bruce Watkins, MD, author of Kings of Snow and Ice
"There is something marvelously Italian at the heart of Secret Ingredients of Life: the understanding that food is never just food. It is memory, family, conversation, place, pleasure, and love. Susanne brings us into kitchens and around tables, but she also takes us somewhere more intimate: into one woman's search for identity and belonging. I could taste, see, and feel this story."
- Claudia Cataldi, president, Brazilian Press Association of Electronic and Digital Media-RJ
"Susanne's story is a delicious reminder that we are allowed to redefine home (and ourselves) as many times as it takes!"
- Cheryl B. King, finance and empowerment strategist, and author of Your Worth
"In Secret Ingredients of Life, Susanne Dillingham embraces the experiences, relationships, risks, and discoveries that shaped her without trying to make them fit a perfect narrative. The result is an engaging and authentic portrait of a woman who has learned to trust who she is."
- Marty Murphy, executive coach, leadership consultant, and author of Unmasked Leadership
"Susanne's story reminds us that leadership is reflected in how we live, what we share, and what we help others see more clearly."
- Kerry Hatch, former president, American Express OPEN and Starwood Luxury Brands, and author of Clarity and Candor
"Some people feed us without ever putting a plate in front of us. They show up, teach us something, make room for us, or give us exactly what we need at a particular moment. That is what I found so moving about Secret Ingredients of Life. Susanne Dillingham tells a wonderful story about food, but an even better one about the people who nourish a life."
-Dr. Bernadine Martinez, U.S. Army veteran, women veterans advocate, and author of My Own Way Out
"Reinvention sounds exciting when we talk about it after the fact. Living through it takes guts. Susanne knows when the recipe is not working. More importantly, she knows when to write a new one!"
- Tom Markert, city commissioner, Delray Beach, and author of bestselling thriller, Death Watch
"Secret Ingredients of Life stayed with me because Susanne does not offer a perfect recipe for belonging. She cooks up something better: permission to create our own."
-Tracy Novick, psychiatric-mental health specialist and author of Prison Bedtime Stories